Recounting the Deeds of the Lord

I was reading in the Scriptures this morning and came across these words in Psalm 78:

4 We will recount to generations to come
the praiseworthy deeds and the power of the Lord,
and the wonderful works he has done.


There is something powerful in the simplicity and strength of this statement. For me, it felt a little bit like marching orders for the people of God.


It was not just their calling to live their lives in constant awareness of God's goodness and mercy, and to respond to God in faith, but also to show their love for him and their place in his story by faithfully living out their commitment to him by sharing what God had done in their lives and in the world with the next generations.


Live in God's presence.
Respond to his grace and mercy.
Be thankful at all times.
Praise him for all he is and all he has done.
Praise him in front of your children, and your children's children.
Teach the next generations about who he is and what he has done! For you, for the world!


That is what I am hearing today, on a morning when I woke up tired (as always) and was asking the Lord for my "marching orders." I do that a lot these days, for the shape of my days look different than they used to. I have days when just getting through a few things that need to be done is all I can manage before it's time to topple over again, still exhausted.  I have days where I think small, remembering my many limitations. I think things like "all I can do today is stay upright, do a little housework, pay a few bills, teach a bit of school to my daughter, write a page or two, handle my medical appointments, try to eat..." (and many days, it's just a couple of the things on that list not all of them). I could add other mundane but important things to that list too...refill a medication, write a thank you note, send an update to my extended family, handle a load of laundry.


And of course, all of those things are necessary, they need to be done. On the most challenging days, I try to remember why I am doing small things, why I am continuing to battle for health and life (with the Lord's strength and in his rest). I am trying to plod along doing the small stuff, but I don't want to forget the big stuff, the overarching vision. Not just for my life, but for all our lives. I need to remember kingdom vision.


And what does that look like? Well, one facet of the kingdom is surely this.


We will recount to generations to come
the praiseworthy deeds and the power of the Lord,
and the wonderful works he has done.

(Psalm 78:4, BCP)

Or as Peterson puts is in the Message, "we're not keeping this to ourselves." God's goodness is meant to be shared!

"To Come Awake...To Remain Awake" (C.S. Lewis)

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with God. God walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake."

(C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly On Prayer)

"Water from the Spiritual Well" (Theresa of Avila)

"Learning to draw water up from the spiritual well is a hard labor, indeed -- at least in the beginning.

It is difficult, in the first place, to keep all of your senses recollected and focused upon total humility before God. What a tremendous difficulty that is, because our senses are so much in the habit of flitting about from one worldly distraction to another. And so you must learn to set aside what you see and hear in order to see and hear what God would pour out upon you from His invisible kingdom...

When we begin to renew our minds in this way -- that is, building the habit of constantly, deeply meditating upon the Lord Jesus -- we draw water up out of the deep wells of salvation (Isaiah 12:3)."

(The Life of Theresa of Jesus) 

Hidden Christmas: Timothy Keller Shares the Gospel With Clarity and Beauty

In recent years, Timothy Keller has become one of my favorite spiritual writers currently writing today. I have read a handful of his books in whole or in part. The "in part" comes because he writes so thoughtfully and deeply that I often find myself taking notes as I read, which means I don't always have time to finish his books before they go back to the library. Though I am thankful I can always check them out again!

Not long ago, I discovered he had written a new book entitled Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ. I got the news from Byron Borger on his terrific blog at Hearts and Minds Books. I trust Borger a lot as a reviewer, so when he placed this book in first place on his "must reads" for Advent, and wrote that he was "very grateful for its clear headed teaching" I went straight to my library catalog and put it on hold. Since it was already December, I thought I might have a long wait, but to my surprise and delight, it hit the hold shelf quickly...giving me some unexpected Advent reading.

When it comes to spiritual books, I am usually a sipper, not a gulper, but here's the thing -- I couldn't put this book down. It's true it's relatively short: just eight chapters and 144 pages, but not being able to put it down is not something I am used to saying about a book that is essentially devotional in nature. Keller draws on years worth of Christmas sermons he's given as a Presbyterian pastor in a handful of churches, and all I can say is I imagine he is a terrifically compelling speaker. These chapters are so clear, so cogent, and so soaked in the grace and goodness of the gospel that any heart hungry to grow closer to Jesus is going to love reading them.

Essentially what he does in each chapter is focus on a biblical text that relates some part of the Christmas story, and then dives deep for real and powerful truth about what that text means and how it can affect us when we embrace the truth of the text. The Scriptural passages he chooses are excellent ones: some of them are the ones you expect (the annunciation, the angels imparting the good news to the shepherds, the "people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light," the wise men making their visit, etc.) and some of them are ones you might not expect quite as much, such as the genealogy passages about Jesus' lineage, the word Mary receives from Simeon that Jesus is destined to cause the rise and and fall of many and that a sword will pierce her soul, and the words of the apostle John in 1 John chapter 1 about how he had truly seen and looked at and touched the Word of Life. In each of these, and other cases, he expounds so clearly and beautifully on the passage, bringing certain things about it to light -- some I had pondered before, and some I honestly never had thought of in just quite the way he was pondering it.

This is a book that both comforts and challenges us with the truth of the incarnation: that Jesus truly was God who took on human flesh and descended from heaven to share our lives and to rescue us from sin and death, a rescue we could never ever perform for ourselves. Over and over, he points to this truth, and doesn't just point to it, but invites us to embrace it in all its radical wonder and beauty. He reminds us of what our lives can look like and be like -- truly free and wonderfully saved -- when we trust in the truth of these accounts, look to Jesus, and really place our trust in him as Savior of the world and King of our hearts. 

His point in the introduction of the book is that "Christmas is the only Christian holy day that is also a major secular holiday..." although there are still glimmers of the reality it stands for in the ways that some secular people celebrate (putting up lights, listening to carols that still speak the gospel, giving gifts). His hope is that this little book can help people who celebrate Christmas without a full awareness of why they are celebrating to learn more about its real roots, because "to understand Christmas is to understand basic Christianity, the Gospel." So this is definitely a book you can recommend to friends who are not Christians, but who are open to reading and learning more about it.

On the other hand, it is also a book I think the church itself needs to read, so I also recommend it to brothers and sisters in the faith. For many of us, we have perhaps unconsciously fallen into celebrating Christmas in ways that dip far more into secular understandings that we realize. I don't necessarily mean that we buy totally into the season's commercialism (I know plenty of Christians who have simplified that element of the celebration, and who spend a good deal of time preparing their hearts and the hearts of their families through Advent preparation) but I think it's easy for all of us to fall into a simplistic sentimentalization of the story of Jesus' birth, perhaps partly because we've heard it so often and have so many nostalgic associations with it. Like our non-believing friends, we need to keep hearing the Gospel, even if we have already responded to it and given our lives to Jesus. We need to keep preaching (or letting other people preach) to our own hearts about how much we need God, how deeply he shows his love for us through the incarnation and ultimately through his suffering and death, how we need to rely on the resurrected Lord daily for his strength, mercy, and goodness.

This book was definitely the kind of preaching I needed this Advent. I might add that this is the first Advent which I have ever celebrated that has felt overshadowed by suffering and death: I lost my dear mother a few days before Christmas last year and am missing her so much; I have struggled in almost eleven months of treatment for late-stage cancer; and (in a much smaller part of everything, but still part of it) I am having to move from the home where I've lived for nearly twenty years to a brand new place. Put it all together, and you can see that I am a woman in need of contemplating the Christmas story anew -- but then isn't this really a need each one of us has? Because we all live in a world that is full of suffering, pain, homesickness, brokenness, worry, fear, and yes, death. THAT is the world Jesus came to, and he came to it because it was filled with such things. He came to bring life and to be the light. He came to save us because we could not save ourselves. And he came to bring comfort and rest to the weary, because he loves us so.

I'm deeply grateful that Timothy Keller reminded me of the power and truth of the Gospel in such compelling and clearly ordered reflections. I needed those reminders this year. If you do too, I highly recommend you find and read a copy of Hidden Christmas. I loved gulping it down like a parched woman who needed a long drink of living water, but I plan to go back to it and sip again and again.

The Gospel: New and Yet the Same

I had a difficult night's sleep where I seemed to be worrying and fretting about many things (to paraphrase Jesus in speaking to Martha of Bethany). It was one of those nights where I tossed back and forth, never sleeping deeply, my dreams punctuated by lots of things, big and little, that are making me anxious.

It didn't help that I woke up a little before 2 certain that I'd heard gunshots outside. We live in a small city and we're in an area near a now empty lot, so I suppose it's possible -- though it's also possible I heard firecrackers (that happens too) or a car backfiring or just a loud noise that my brain transformed into something much more anxiety producing.

I finally fell a little more asleep in the wee small hours, though I never felt like I slept as deeply as I needed. Which is all the more reason to be grateful for the thoughts I woke up to, which are simply this: the gospel never changes. The same gospel at work in the lives of the apostles, saints, and martyrs is the gospel at work in me. The same gospel that freed my great-grandmother and set the hearts of so many others in our family to dancing in delight is the gospel I get to dance to today.

Isn't that amazing? It's true that God's mercies are new every morning (great is your faithfulness!) and that those mercies are new and fresh in each generation, each person, in a different way. But our hope, while as fresh as the new dawn, is also as old and older than the sun. God doesn't change, and neither does his life-giving word. Our hope is rooted in his eternal changelessness and yet new and fresh as he stirs it into the swirling waters of this day, this me, this life. The gospel that spoke to my anxiety and fears in the night is the same gospel that shines brightly in the light of the morning. We have this sure and certain hope.

Complete Joy (Meditative Reading and Thinking With Henri Nouwen)

We've just turned the corner on fall, and I am at last reaching the end of a book I began re-reading in mid-summer: Henri Nouwen's The Return of the Prodigal Son.

I first read this book many years ago in seminary. My seminary years are now so long ago that they're beginning to feel like a distant memory. Trying to remember specifics of what I learned gets harder, but the general contours are still with me. And the thing seminary taught me most was to be a better reader.

I learned that lesson in two ways: first, I was taught (by two professors in particular) how to read theology and history in ways that helped me mine, respect, and otherwise engage what was being said. I call this informational reading. Secondly, I was taught the importance of reading that is formational rather than informational. Some call it lectio divina (divine reading). It's the art of sitting with -- meditating on, ruminating, praying through -- what you read. Both kinds of reading are important in different places and seasons, and both are things I knew how to do in some measure before I went to seminary, but it was there that I learned to think about how I approached a text and what I was trying to get out of it (or receive from it, or let it do with me).

I liken meditative reading to sipping rather than gulping. It's a metaphor that works for me, and makes me smile, because I am the "sipper" in my family -- the one who can take a glass of iced tea and make it last for a couple of hours, while my husband, for instance, tends to gulp down one glass and order another. While I am a sipper of tea, I have always tended, by temperament and inclination, to be a gulper of words. That may be a by-product of how early in life I read and how much of my life I've spent doing it, but I do have the tendency to read fast and furiously. It's not always a bad way to read, especially when falling into a story you love (and know you can go back to read more slowly later) but it's not the kind of reading that tends to serve me best when I am approaching spiritual reading.

With the Scriptures and with other spiritual books, I have tried to consciously slow down my reading. I tell myself that learning to sit with a small portion of text is more important than racing through. I have learned to be a sipper of words when it comes to books that feed my spiritual thirst.

I mention all this because I have spent a lot of months reading Nouwen's relatively small book, and it has blown me away on this second reading. I remember enjoying it and getting a lot from it when I read it in seminary, but I am sure I tended to gulp it then because I was in the midst of two-years of fire-hose kinds of reading (ironically the sheer weight of academic reading in seminary almost assured that, despite learning a lot about reading formationally, I spent most of my time reading informationally). I don't think the book was assigned. I think I chose to read it as part of a project I did for a course on Christianity and the Arts, in which I surveyed different ways artists had engaged the story of the prodigal son.

This time through, I've been able to linger in passages, go back and revisit lines, paragraphs, and pages that spoke to me the first time through, and sometimes journal my engagement with the words. The Return of the Prodigal is, essentially, a book about reading: Nouwen spends its roughly 150 pages "reading" Rembrandt's famous painting of the same name, reflecting on what he has learned as he contemplated it, and reflecting on how the painting has helped him to read himself (and find himself in the painting and in the story from the gospels that it depicts). That's a lot of reading layers, and it's just a joy to add to the layers when you come to the book and add your own layers of engagement -- with Nouwen's words, with the painting, and with the gospel story.

Since my memory of the first time I read this book is rather dim, I found myself smiling at how many times, as I sipped at the book this summer, I would think to myself "whoa, that was powerful," or "oh, that's truly a beautiful insight I needed to hear," thoughts that would be quickly chased by the thought "that's probably why I loved this book so much the first time." After awhile, I started to chuckle whenever I had the thought. It's a book full of rich places to linger, and I can't honestly pinpoint which part is the part that might have spoken the most to my 30 year old self. But I can engage how it speaks to me at 47 -- and of course, part of the wonder of reading is that the book itself, sitting all these years with no changes to it text, becomes a different book because I am a different person than I was when last I read it. It has floated into a different place in the river of my life, and oh, I'm thankful it has.

Just one tiny, tiny example of how I find myself sipping at its riches came in a passage I read a few days ago. In the book's penultimate chapter: "The Father Calls for a Celebration," Nouwen reflects on how God invites us into joy. He writes:

"The father of the prodigal son gives himself totally to the joy that his returning son brings him. I have to learn from that. I have to learn to 'steal' all the real joy there is to steal and lift it up for others to see. Yes, I know that not everybody has been converted yet, that there is not yet peace everywhere, that all pain has not yet been taken away, but still, I see people turning and returning home; I hear voices that pray; I notice moments of forgiveness, and I witness many signs of hope. I don't have to wait until all is well, but I can celebrate every little hint of the Kingdom that is at hand.

This is a real discipline.  It requires choosing for the light even when there is much darkness to frighten me, choosing for life even when the forces of death are so visible, and choosing the truth even when I am surrounded by lies. I am tempted to be so impressed by the obvious sadness of the human condition that I no longer claim the joy manifesting itself in many small but very real ways. The reward of choosing joy is joy itself."

He goes on later to say:

"People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness...Jesus lived this joy of the Father's house to the full. In him we can see his Father's joy. 'Everything the Father has is mine,' he says, including God's boundless joy. That divine joy does not obliterate the divine sorrow. In our world, joy and sorrow exclude each other. Here below, joy means the absence of sorrow and sorrow the absence of joy. But such distinctions do not exist in God. Jesus, the Son of God, is the man of sorrows, but also the man of complete joy...Jesus wants me to have the same joy he enjoys: 'I have loved you, just as my Father has loved me. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love just as I have kept my Father's  commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this, so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete.'"

Let those last words of Jesus sink down deep into your heart. "I have loved you, just as my Father has loved me. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this, so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete."

Is it not astonishing to realize, really and truly realize, that we are so loved? That Jesus himself wants our joy to be complete? Those were the astonishing words I found myself penning in my journal as I reflected on this passage the other day: "Jesus wants my joy to be complete." I wrote them down large. I underlined them. They were my takeaway, my ribbon to carry with me from this passage, and I am walking with them still. Jesus desires our joy. He is longing for our joy. He is working for our joy. He invites us into the joy he has known with his Father from before the time the world began. He offers us the pathway into joy: abiding in his love, obeying his commandments. In another place, he tells us that his commandment is that we love one another so that our joy may be full. He shows us that true joy lies in our loving as the Father has loved. Our love for others then isn't something we do just because it's our duty or even because we are grateful that we are so loved (though those are all bound up in why we love). Our love for others, through the power of the Holy Spirit, becomes the way we are caught up in the divine life of Jesus and the Father and invited to inhabit their joy which is deep and wide and real and which encompasses everything we know and experience, including real sorrow.

Wow. Just wow. (No doubt, this was the passage that made me love this book so many years ago!) Yes, I'm chuckling again.  And I'm so glad I've had a chance to sip at Nouwen's beautiful book once more.

Reading Round-Up: Early Summer Edition

Summertime! Our recent trip to Virginia to see family, coupled with the fact that school is out, means I am getting some long overdue reading time. Even though I have a heavier teaching load this summer than usual (at the seminary) I am still enjoying some good reading time.

Here's a peek at some of what I've been reading lately.

Young Fiction

The sweet girl (aka Jedi Teen...who by the way truly has officially reached her teen years now!) has been busy recommending books to me, deep into her own summer reading. Some of these she's found on her own and some we've ferreted out together via book lists. So far I have really enjoyed Savvy by Ingrid Law and One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt, two mid-grade books I might not have read but for the sweet girl's encouragement. I enjoyed Savvy, an interesting mix of fantasy and realism, for its creative story-line and highly creative use of language. One for the Murphys, the debut novel of author Hunt (whose second book Fish in a Tree the sweet girl and I both enjoyed earlier this year) is the story of a young girl in foster care. It reminded me a little bit of Katherine Paterson's The Great Gilly Hopkins, though Gilly had less overt sentiment.

Jedi Teen and I reviewed the graphic novel Smile together, and she's gone on to read two other graphic novels by Raina Telegemeier (I've started Sisters, but haven't had a chance to finish it). We both also read the seventh (and perhaps last, though we're not sure) Clementine book by Sara Pennypacker, Completely Clementine. It's so funny to realize that the sweet girl started reading these when she was about Clementine's age. Clementine has only made it through her third grade year in these seven terrific books, while my daughter has shot past her by years. But we both still love them, almost the way you love to and return to a good Ramona book. And that's saying something.

Mysteries

I've needed a lighthearted return to mystery reading this summer, and decided to dive back into my exploration of the books of Patricia Wentworth.  I'm not sure quite how many of the Miss Silver mysteries I've read now, but I know I've done three since late spring: She Came Back, The Gazebo, and Out of the Past. All of these were written in the 1950s, I think, and she definitely had her formula down by then. I'm cottoning on to what makes a Wentworth a Wentworth -- I actually managed to guess the murderer in the last one -- and I'm very much enjoying the camaraderie between Miss Silver and Inspector Abbot, who looks upon this school-teacher-ish maiden-aunt woman with both amusement and awe. I love that he trusts her detecting instincts so completely that he'd pretty much follow her blindfolded in a snowstorm. It's a great early example of an amateur and professional partnership.

Non-Fiction

So much really good non-fiction on my plate right now...it's sort of an embarrassment of riches. I'm inwardly singing with joy over the beautiful essays in James K.A. Smith's Discipleship in the Present Tense, which seem to be "speaking my theology" in ways I've only felt with a few authors in the past. I'm revisiting a gem of a book I loved years ago and recently rediscovered in a library book sale: Henri Nouwen's Return of the Prodigal -- and I need to hear what he has to say just as much as I did then. It's one of those beautiful gospel-centered books that we all need to revisit from time to time for the good of our hearts. And it's reminding me how much I love the artistry of Rembrandt and his Prodigal painting in particular.

I'm learning a ton of history I never knew from David Garrison's A Wind in the House of Islam, a book that is both challenging and encouraging. It's a carefully researched and well-written account of some of the many amazing things that God had done among Muslim communities in centuries past and is currently doing among Muslims in this century. I was going to call it a book of mission history (which it is) but I'd rather give it the bigger parameter of Christian history or just history (thinking about Justo Gonzalez' reminder that we too often separate the study of missions from the rest of church and world history).

I'm still working my way through N.T. Wright's Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians, which is taking me longer than I expected, mostly because I find myself wanting to chew thoughtfully on his insights. I keep meaning to jot some of the things that are particularly speaking to me -- from Wright, Nouwen, Smith, and Garrison especially -- here on the blog. Maybe I will have a chance to do that soon.

Typing, Naming, and Praying

Once a month I type up revisions to my parish's prayer sheet. This is a sheet that gets distributed to the congregation each month with updated lists of people to pray for: people in need of healing, people we work with in church outreaches, local and national community leaders, missionaries and ministry workers connected to our church in some way, people being persecuted for their faith. It's a long list. Included in it are also diocesan and international prayer cycles: we pray for various bishops, priests, deacons, and lay people at work in our diocese, in our national church body, and in the wider Anglican communion.

I long ago discovered that it's easier for me to type in the rotating lists of names than to try to lift them from online sources and paste them in. That's particularly true for the communion-wide list, which is printed online in such a way that moving names via copy/paste would wreak formatting havoc with my document, leaving me with lots to clean up and reformat. Despite the fact that it may seem a little tedious to have to type all names in one at a time, especially when some of the names are unusual to this English speaker and not easy to spell, it's still faster and tidier than doing it any other way, in my humble opinion. But more than that, it gives me time to think, ponder, and pray my way through the list as I type.

There's something wonderfully grounding and connecting about typing in a person's name (and making sure you've spelled it accurately). Even though you may never have seen or even heard of this person, typing their name somehow gives you a tangible link with who they are. Since all of the names I'm working with are names of leaders, mostly bishops and archbishops, I know that each one of them has a challenging role and a lot on their hearts, no matter where they serve. Some of the names I type in with ease, and some I stumble over, breaking them into unusual syllables and then putting them back together, wondering if my mental pronunciation is anywhere close to how you actually say the name. Some of the bishops are in countries torn by war or where Christians face daily persecution. As I type their names, I find myself lifting each of them to God and praying that the Lord will watch over his servant.

And I love the names. Some of them have three or four names, many of them biblical. Then there are names (first, middle, or last) that evoke a picture: names like Godson, Maker, and Coffin (all fascinating names for bishops, I think). There are African names like Aladekugbe and Asian names like Iso. There are names that bring to mind Irish, Scots, or Welsh saints.

Sometimes  I confess I am tired when prayer-sheet revision time rolls around, and part of me doesn't feel like taking the time to scroll through the lists and type in the letters. But most of me realizes that by the time I'm done, I will feel more in tune and more connected with people of God all around the world, and more gratefully aware of the myriad of stories that are all connected just in this one slim chapter of the story of the communion of the saints. I know my typing in these lists is just a tiny service but it's one that refuels me every month to remember what a privilege is it to be part of the worldwide body of Christ and to pray for my family.

Stones That Bear a Witness

Last week, I posed a discussion starter question to my church history students, one which has turned out to be a thought-provoking one for me as well. I asked them to ponder the “visual books” of Gothic cathedrals and how they represented the medieval synthesis that was so much a part of Christendom, and then to think about modern structures or spaces and what they might be communicating about our particular time and place.

The students did some good thinking, and their reflections ranged far and wide over a number of modern spaces, from movie theaters to shopping malls to church buildings to houses and skyscrapers. I was especially intrigued with their thoughts on shopping malls, because I’ve been reading the beginning of James K.A. Smith’s book Desiring the Kingdom, in which he talks about “cultural liturgies.” He provides a fascinating several- page description of a shopping mall, not chiefly as a functional place of commerce, but as a space that shapes our desires and evokes a religious response in us (more on this another time, I hope…I had the chance to hear him lecture the other evening, and I’ve been chewing on it since).

In our discussion of church buildings, I found several of my students confessing that they found many modern worship spaces sterile and uninviting, built primarily to spare expense and to be able to maintain multi-purpose functions. I agree with them, but I also confessed to some inner wrestling on this very subject over the years.

On the one hand, I see the practical value of meeting in spaces that are more functional and less “obvious” in their churchiness. From my perspective, this is less about making people feel at home in the “familiar” and more about reminding ourselves that the church is not primarily a building, but a community of people. When we invest oodles of money and time into maintaining a space, then we run the risk of investing less time and money in the work and joy of being the church. We also run the risk of tying ourselves so firmly to a beloved space (and space really can be beloved) that we forget how to travel light. So church buildings, even beautiful ones, can sometimes detract us from mission.

On the other hand, I see a real value in creating a space that is beautiful. When our churches invite people into a sacred space that looks different from the everyday, it can remind us all of the true beauty and holiness of God and his kingdom. Such spaces, in their very beauty and creativity, can glorify God who has made us people of creativity with a longing to worship and a longing to know the ultimate beauties of his presence and his realm. Such beauty can even help usher us into a deeper sense of his presence, becoming an incarnational aid and reminding us that God speaks through ordinary stuff, and that we are encultured people called to sing his praise and manifest his goodness in a material world.

If you have doubts about that last line, think for a minute about the church you knew first as a child. You may not remember a word that got preached from the pulpit or a program that you attended. Chances are, however, that you do have an impression of something physical that has stayed with you through the years  – a window, a pew, a cross, a communion table, a candle. And no doubt you have a memory of someone in that church who loved you, taught you, prayed for you, sang with you. We remember love, and we remember physical places. And those physical places often give us some of our first understanding of who God is and what he is like, understandings that can stay with us for a lifetime.

I wonder if this is not something we see running through Scripture, a sort of tension between a worshipping people of God who “travel light” and stay on the move (the moveable, portable tabernacle) and a people of God who plant themselves solidly in one place and build something tangible to witness to his glory (the amazing temple). Clearly there is a place and time in the vision of God for both. And I’m not sure it’s as easy as saying “well, once the people entered the land, they could build” or “once the building was destroyed, it was a signal to disperse and move again.” There are God’s words to David about not needing a house built by human hands, even though he realized how much David longed to build such a space. And yet there is the fact that God did allow Solomon to build the space, and that he envisioned such a space being a place of prayer for all peoples. The lack of permanency of such a space – it gets built and destroyed, built and destroyed again – does say something to us about the finiteness of any human cultural project, no matter how grand and worthy and real. But clearly there was a time and place for the people of God to stay put and be an inviting light, a call that I think sometimes resonates with us more deeply in our modern times when so many people are transient and so many home spaces are broken.

But then (there keeps being another “on the other hand” moment…I’m starting to feel like Tevye) it strikes me with force that where we see the most detailed instructions about building and beauty come in the wilderness. It is there that we see God’s detailed instructions – right down to music, colors, decorative scheme, measurements, clothing, and candlesticks – about the beauty and majesty of the portable, moveable worship space the people were to build and carry with them as they journeyed. Maybe there is something for us to glean here? That we can build spaces that are both beautiful and inviting and yet are spaces that we can “take with us” as we mission forth? That we could even somehow build spaces that witness to the glories of a God who travels with us in the desert and disperses us to the nations?

The Lostness of Mad Men

We’ve recently been watching the second season of Mad Men. I find myself fascinated by the writing and acting (and yes, costumes and sets) of this show, while not necessarily always enjoying the stories. It’s probably a mark of how well written and acted it is that I care about the characters as much as I do, even while gritting my teeth over many of their actions and choices. For instance, I honestly can’t understand how I remain sympathetic to Don Draper, whose sometimes despicable choices make me wince (or make me want to smack him) and yet for the most part, my main feeling for him is pity.

It’s the loneliness of the characters that keeps stabbing me to the heart. The way they strive after success, prestige, youth, beauty, or what have you is sometimes funny, sometimes awful, sometimes pitiable, but you realize how many of them are just truly lonely. It’s particularly painful to watch the scenes between the married couples, like Don and Betty and Pete and Trudy, who seem to spin along like isolated tops, never orbiting close enough to one another (even when they’re touching) to make a real connection.

A scene that took my breath in almost painful intensity the other evening came in an episode when Betty had been yelling a lot at Bobby, the youngest Draper child. It became clear midway through that her frustration with Bobby was really misplaced frustration at her unfaithful and distant husband. She kept snapping at Don, telling him he should discipline Bobby for various minor infractions, and finally Don snapped and threw one of Bobby’s toys against the wall (a toy the child had been playing with at the table) and stormed out.

The boy, about five years old, came trailing forlornly after his angry and frustrated father and lisped out a quiet “I’m sorry.” Don’s angry face looked like it was about to melt. Quite frankly, melting would be a good thing for Don, but he always seems to master whatever emotion threatens to engulf him without surrendering to it. You could practically see him take a deep, inward breath and pull himself together. “Sometimes dads get mad,” he said, kindly and calmly and inadequately, but at least it was an admission of sorts that he’d lost his cool. “Did your dad get mad?” asked Bobby curiously, and Don nodded and told him lots of times. “And your daddy’s dead?” asked Bobby then, and Don responded, “He died a long time ago.” To which the child replied, his face completely somber, “We need to find you a new daddy.”

This heart wrenching scene actually ends in Don hugging his son close, a tenderness we don’t often get to see. Talk about a beautifully played and written one. That one childish remark cuts to the heart of Don’s lostness, and the lostness of all the other characters too. 

Everybody needs a loving father. We may especially feel it when we’ve lost our earthly fathers or are estranged from them, but it’s just an underlying truth for us all, regardless of what we've experienced with our human parents. Yet another reason to be deeply thankful for the loving Abba heart of God.

Revisiting a Classic: The Practice of the Presence of God

The Practice of the Presence of God is one of those classic works of devotion that I feel I should have read in its entirety...but I'm not sure I ever have. I know I've read it in excerpt, but it's been a while since I've done even that. Still the idea of Brother Lawrence, living his simple, every-day life in a 17th century monastery and practicing his awareness of God's presence while he washes dishes is very appealing to this tired, simple, every-day mom-teacher-writer. So today I thought I would pick it up and start it anew.

The funny thing was, I loved the first page so much, I couldn't get past it. (Okay, today was a busy day...but still...I really felt the need to linger on those opening paragraphs.)

Here's what I especially loved in those first few paragraphs:

• That he felt his first deep "kindling" of love towards God when contemplating a bare, winter tree and considering how it would soon bloom with flowers and fruit again. This gave him a vision of God's providence and power.

•  That when he first joined the monastery, he assumed everything about the life would show him his awkwardness and faults and that he'd be making a big sacrifice to enter that kind of life, but God instead gave him years of satisfaction and contentment. (Surprise! How like God to give us joy where we expect difficulty!)

• That we need to be faithful in times of dryness, insensibility, and "irksomeness in prayer," that our faithfulness in times like those could do much for our growth in love for God. (I love how he just candidly admits to irksome prayer times.)

• That instead of troubling himself and freaking out (okay, my paraphrase) about how bad people could be and how awful the world was getting, he marveled that, given the power of sin, things weren't worse, he prayed for those who were sinning, and he trusted that God could remedy anything. And after that, he wouldn't trouble himself about those things anymore. 

Seven Year Shoes: Gratitude and Simplicity

My all-weather mocs have finally worn out! I figured out how old they are by revisiting a post I remembered writing about them (and about the blessing of sister love and gifts) back in 2006.

There is something really satisfying in actually wearing out a pair of shoes, especially when they are good quality shoes that have seen a ton of walking wear. I remember, back in my younger years, feeling sort of in awe of Richard Foster's chapter on the spiritual discipline of simplicity where he talked about wearing out clothes. In my youth, I couldn't quite fathom that. In the past decade and a half, I have not only learned it can be done, I've made a practice of doing it. Granted, I've mostly come to this from the practical fact that we can't afford many clothes, and since I am a) not working outside the house and b) not growing anymore (unless unintentionally because of weight gain, alas) I am the one in our household who can get by with fewer things. But sometimes practical considerations and choices, when they become habits over time, can work their way into our hearts and help us learn and grow. Like the practice of writing and sending a poem to friends during the Advent season, or the practice of cooking mostly meatless meals.

The whole conversation around spiritual disciplines and daily choices can take time to work out in your heart, I think. The sweet girl and I were talking recently about why I first became a vegetarian many years ago (I'm no longer a full vegetarian, but only eat poultry and fish, not red meat or pork). I had a lot of reasons, but one of them was to eat lower on the food chain, partly out of solidarity with hungry people. That's a hard one to explain sometimes, because my eating less will not help anyone eat more -- just as my wearing my clothes longer (not getting hung up on fashion, and wearing things till they wear out) will not clothe anyone who needs clothes. I think it's why we need disciplines of engagement (like works of mercy -- feeding the poor, providing clothes to those in need) along with disciplines of dis-engagement and self-denial.

Any time we learn to do without -- especially if we let it draw us closer to God and to our fellow human beings -- there can be blessings. Doing without, or simplifying, in and of itself, is not necessarily virtuous. You can do without and possess a spirit of envy and discontent or anger. Or you can do without and feel pride in the doing without. We're really good at falling into sin either way, we human beings, even when we're trying our hardest not to. But doing without can also be a window and a place of grace.

It's not always easy. I am super, incredibly thankful for the generous gifts that helped us to get our car fixed recently. Not having a reliable car for two months, while doable, was plain hard. Our family has been there before, and likely will be again, and while I am so grateful for God's provision, I'm also grateful for lessons we learned while walking and riding buses. I'm proud of how my daughter, whose struggles with OCD and anxiety make it very hard for her to embrace change and deal with brokenness, dealt with those two months that were filled with other challenges at the same time.

I'm also learning newfound thankfulness for the people I see all around me who see situations of hardship and choose to walk right into them and do what can be done with love. I think of two dear friends making a difference with a homeless shelter ministry two hours north of me, and a woman in our church, in ministry in the town across the river, who is gathering formula and gift certificates for moms who can't get WIC during the government shut-down. I think of people who will never know how their incredibly timed gifts have sometimes literally fed and clothed my family.

It's so awesome when we become hands and feet for each other in the body of Christ. And it's funny how just looking at a worn out pair of shoes can sometimes be cause for doxology.

Revisiting a Classic (Richard Foster's "Celebration of Discipline")

It was in college over twenty years ago where I first encountered Richard Foster. I read his book Celebration of Discipline cover to cover, and it was one of my main "go-to" books on the spiritual life for several years. I would return to it whenever I needed to remember the importance of certain daily disciplines or when I felt like I had ceased to remember the purpose of the classical spiritual disciplines.

Over the years, I would go back to Celebration -- and to other books by Foster, especially on prayer and on different devotional traditions/streams -- at different seasons in my life. I would sometimes pull on Foster when I was teaching a class or leading a group. But it had been a long time since I'd picked up Celebration of Discipline and opened it to read it straight through, instead of giving myself a quick, refreshing dip.

This week I started a full re-read because it turns out to be one of the books I will be teaching from this fall. Ironically, I couldn't find my well-worn and much marked up copy from years ago -- I think I must have taken it off the shelf to reference it a while back, and somehow it didn't make its way back to the proper place. So I had to borrow a copy from the library, which I worried would put me at a disadvantage because all my markings would be missing. What I've discovered instead is that:

a) I think I can hear it fresher without reading it alongside the notes made by my younger self and
b) Certain lines or passages are so emblazoned in my memory and heart that I almost see the underlines that aren't there.

Here are a few of my permanent mental underlines from the first chapter, entitled "The Spiritual Disciplines: Door to Liberation."

"God intends the Disciplines of the spiritual life to be for ordinary human beings: people who have jobs, who care for children, who wash dishes and mow lawns."

"Joy is the keynote of all the Disciplines. The purpose of the Disciplines is liberation from the stifling slavery to self-interest and fear."

"Beginners are welcome."

"Inwardly you long to launch out into the deep."

"The life that is pleasing to God is not a series of religious duties. We have only one thing to do, namely, to experience a life of relationship and intimacy with God..."

"Willpower will never succeed in dealing with the deeply ingrained habits of sin."

"When we despair of gaining inner transformation through human powers of will and determination, we are open to a wonderful new realization: inner righteousness is a gift from God to be graciously received...The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside."

"We do not need to be hung on the horns of the dilemma of either human works or idleness. God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving his grace. The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us."

"...it would be proper to speak of 'the path of disciplined grace.' It is 'grace' because it is free; it is 'disciplined' because there is something for us to do."

"We must always remember that the path does not produce the change; it only places us where the change can occur. This is the path of disciplined grace."

"When we genuinely believe that inner transformation is God's work and not ours, we can put to rest our passion to set others straight."

"Our world is hungry for genuinely changed people."

Learning to Live Without a Car (and Within Limitations)

It’s been several years since our family has gone for such an extended period of time without a car. While a car is not an absolute necessity (as we’re learning once again) given our culture and location, having one sure does make life a lot easier. Here are some of the things I’ve been re-learning as we cope with being without a vehicle again.

1)      Realize that public transportation is a blessing – and it also has real limitations. Think of this the next time you see people waiting at a bus stop in broiling 90 degree heat or a freezing cold rain. When you take public transportation, you have the following blessings: someone else gets you where you need to go while you read, think, or people-watch. But you must work your life around the schedule of pick-ups and drop-offs. That means being on time to catch things (hurry! hurry!) or dawdling somewhere while you have an extended wait for the next one, no matter what the weather. Every errand you run will take longer when you factor in stops, waits, and transfers. And some places are nigh onto impossible to get to on public transportation, or will require a good bit of walking even when you take buses. Which leads me to #2….

2)      Be humble enough to ask for rides or to borrow a car. On occasion, something you need to do will be important enough that you can’t drop it from your schedule even if it’s impossible to get there via a bus or buses. The sweet girl’s psychologist appointments fall in these parameters for us right now. She is making great progress with her anxiety issues and those regularly scheduled meetings are important to her (and our) health and well-being. We literally feel we can’t drop them from our schedule. But we can’t easily get there in any way, shape or form without a car. God has blessed us with a neighbor who has allowed us to borrow her’s each week. Which leads me to #3…

3)      Consolidate your errands. If you only have a car for a couple of hours a week, you begin to think long and hard about what you can do with it while you have it. It doesn’t really matter if your schedule is inconvenienced, you may need to use that brief window of time to pick up something at a store you can’t easily get to any other way. Which leads me to #4…

4)      Get creative about meal-planning. Meal-planning is highly affected by what stores you can access.  We had grown used to shopping at a handful of stores each week/month to get the best deals we could for our meager food budget. Sometimes when you don’t have a car, that’s not possible. You make the best choices you can make given what you have in front of you. That may mean buying brands you don’t prefer, either generics that may or may not be the quality you’d like or sometimes buying name-brands for higher-prices because that’s what a store has. You will get creative, I promise you. You will discover that you can meal plan around grocery aisles you hardly used before in the one store that you can get to easily. You will discover new impetus to cook more from scratch – a good thing, but sometimes time consuming. (Again, don’t be afraid to take time. Our culture is so enamored of speed. You’ve got to step outside that mind-set because speed can’t be a priority.) And a side note here: the next time you’re tempted to think critical thoughts about someone who is poor who seems to be making less than optimum choices about how to spend their money or what to eat, remember that sometimes their choices are more limited than your choices. People can only do what they can do given what they can access.

5)      Be aware you’re going to get into good shape. We’re walking more than we’ve walked in months just to get where we need to go. The store, the bank, the post office, our church. Some of those we walk to a lot anyway, but not all the time, which has become necessary. Sometimes you will walk those places carrying heavy bags. Invest in good canvas bags. Be prepared for neck and shoulder aches. D and I have been realizing we’re not even in as good a shape as we thought we were (and we didn’t think we were that great). My legs and ankles feel perpetually tired right now. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just something to get used to in the new normal.

6)      Decide what hills you want to die on. For instance, in our family, we use the public library two towns over a lot…for pleasure, for homeschool, for teaching and writing research, for after school program planning. We get a lot of books, some of them big and heavy. Guess what? Without a car, we tote those books on the bus. I tell myself : decide now if you need seven things on the hold shelf this week or could honestly get by with three.

7)      Give yourselves lots and lots of grace. In our family, that means being willing to be as flexible as possible and to live with other people’s stresses. Given the sweet girl’s issues with OCD (and her weather-related anxieties) this is not always easy. There may be times we really can’t all get where we think we need to go in a given time frame. Guess what? It’s not the end of the world. Learn to do without. Learn to compromise. Learn to be thankful for whatever the day holds (a good lesson no matter what).

8)      Stay expectant. We’re still looking for ways to afford our car repairs. I find myself on tip-toes as I pray for open doors for more work or even an unexpected gift. We know the weather is going to get colder in the coming weeks; we know our situation isn’t the easiest for our family right now and is likely to get more challenging when that happens. We also trust God knows our needs, not just in terms of getting from point A to point B, but how much stress our little family unit can manage. This kind of situation gives you lots of exercise – not just physical exercise for your muscles, but spiritual exercise. Letting ordinary stresses deepen us, make us more grateful, humble, empathetic and hopeful is a good thing. Learning what we can live without is a good thing. Leaning ever deeper on God and trusting him to provide is a very good thing indeed.

Let Jesus Fill You With Joy

“Give Jesus not only your hands to serve, but your heart to love. Pray with absolute trust in God’s loving care for you. Let Him use you without consulting you. Let Jesus fill you with joy that you may preach without preaching.”

—Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

The Legacy of Transformed Lives

In preparation for a class I'm teaching this fall, I've begun reading Greg Ogden's Transforming Discipleship. The first two chapters, diagnosing some of the problems or challenges facing the church's understanding and practice of discipleship, is solid but not very eye-opening (in the sense that it doesn't cover much I hadn't thought about before, and it limits the understanding of discipleship issues to more or less one segment of the Christian tradition).

Where the book is beginning to get lively and thought-provoking for me is in chapter 3, "Why Jesus Invested in a Few," where Ogden ruminates upon the wisdom of Jesus' practice of investing deeply in the lives of a handful of disciples. Why not build his ministry on mass appeal and following? he asks, and reflects that...

"The very nature of a crowd is the ability to be lost in it. It costs nothing to be a part of the masses. One can either be positively or negatively inclined. A member of a crowd, such as a worshiper in a congregation, can remain lost in a sea of faces, neither having to commit nor declare loyalty. A person can be anything from a curious observer to a skeptic or bored pew-sitter. Jesus ministered to the crowd in order to call people out of it. One was not on the road to discipleship unless that person came out of the crowd to identify with Jesus. There are twin prerequisites for following Christ -- cost and commitment, neither of which can occur in the anonymity of the masses." (my emphasis)

Ogden also points out that the gospels show us the fickleness of the crowds (think about the passion week narratives, where the same crowd that shouts "Hosanna!" one day shouts "Crucify him!" the next). Jesus, he reminds us, didn't stake things on the loyalty of the crowd. He quotes A.B. Bruce who wrote "But for the twelve, the doctrine, the works, the image of Jesus might have perished from human resemblance, nothing remaining but a vague mythical tradition, of historical value, of little practical importance."

It occurs to me that isn't really an overstatement. I think often about the apostolicity of the Scriptures -- that living witness that comes down to us through the written Word. And I know I have thought often about the importance of trusting the Holy Spirit in the process of inspiration; we trust the Spirit and so trust that witness is reliable and sure. I've also thought a lot about what an oral culture Jesus lived in, and how in some ways it's not surprising that he himself did not leave a written account. But isn't it amazing and wonderful to ponder that Jesus entrusted so much of his life -- and the transmission of that life -- to his disciples? As Ogden writes:

"A former president attempts to shape the perceptions of history by writing his memoirs. Why did Jesus not choose the same approach? Jesus appeared to rely on two means to carry his life and mission forward: the Holy Spirit and the Twelve. His life was transferred to their life by his Spirit and by his association with and investment in them. The irrefutable legacy Jesus wanted to leave behind was the transformed lives of ordinary men who would carry on his work after he returned to the Father."

From the Day Book: Hannah More

My collection of quotes and small readings keeps growing, and I often find myself wanting to ruminate on them. Today, it's this quote from Hannah More that has me thinking.

More, by the way, was a member of the Clapham Sect, a group of British Christians responsible, in part, for the healthy reforming of English society and the abolition of slavery in Great Britain. She was also a devotional writer.

********

"Remember that life is not entirely made up of great evils or heavy trials. The perpetual recurrence of petty evils and small trials is the ordinary and appointed way to mature our Christian graces. To bear with the moodiness of those about us, with their infirmities, their bad judgments, their perverse tempers; to endure neglect where we feel we have deserved attention, and ingratitude where we expected thanks — to bear with the whole company of disagreeable people whom Divine Providence has placed in our way, and whom God has perhaps provided on purpose for the trial of our virtues — these are the best exercises for our graces; and the better because not chosen by ourselves. To meekly bear with . . .

continual vexations in our homes,
disappointments in our expectations,
interruptions in our times of rest,
the follies, intrusions, and disturbances of others;
in short, to meekly bear with whatever opposes our will and contradicts our desires is the very essence of self-denial. These constant, inevitable, and lesser evils, properly improved, furnish the best moral discipline for the Christian."

~Hannah More

*********

 "The perpetual recurrence of petty evils and small trials" -- that covers a lot of our every-day lives, doesn't it? If we're honest, most of us don't deal with the big stuff on a regular basis: the major evils, the ordeals and trials that feel too heavy to bear. While we can be thankful that is not the stuff of every-day, sometimes the "small stuff" can be the most wearing...but also the most useful in terms of training us in holiness, "the best exercises for our graces."

I love the thought that graces, virtues, holy habits, need exercise. And we get the best exercise through learning to bear with those little things that almost drive us crazy. The tweak I would add to More's words above is that we don't just have to deal with *other* people's moodiness, infirmities, bad judgements, irritable tempers -- but with our own. Chances are, we've all been the "disagreeable person" that someone else has learned their graces through, and sometimes bearing with someone else's shortcomings can feel easier than bearing with our own. This is why we need times when we're just full-out honest before God, confessing to him all the petty stuff in our own hearts and letting him wash us clean. 

Self-denial isn't a very easy thing for most of us (and we like to relegate it to seasons, like Lent) but when we stop to consider, we really practice some form of it every day. Whenever we put aside our preferences and comfort for the sake of someone else's, that's a form of self-denial. It doesn't have to be a big deal, and if we've "done our exercises," hopefully we'll discover after a time that we do the small forms without thinking about it. Such actions become second nature -- literally a "second nature," because it's really only possible for us to live in such loving, freeing ways because we've been freely loved and forgiven. Life being what it is, generally once we learn one lesson we need to learn, in bearing with our own or someone else's frailties, we discover that's just a step toward learning something else we need to learn. We grow, we learn, and God stretches us to keep learning and growing. It's a lifelong process, and Jesus is unfailingly patient and kind as we fall down, get back up, and try again.  He sees who we are and who we are becoming, and he gives us the strength we need.

Singing in the Shadow

The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. (Psalm 121:5-6)

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. (Psalm 63:1) 

It’s hot.

I’ve never actually lived in a sandy desert (though I’ve visited one) but I often feel like I live in an asphalt one. When you live in a city with lots of concrete and relatively few trees, you begin to relate more to the biblical psalmists who spoke of the wilderness in such graphic terms.

When it’s really hot, like it’s been this week, it can be hard to feel like moving. Taking actual physical steps, especially after you’ve been walking awhile, requires effort. You become aware that you’re moving bulk (yourself) through air. Unlike actual deserts, which usually experience dry heat, summer heat in our parts contains humidity – and that brings its own discomfort. The moist dampness of the air makes it feel like you’re pushing through water. The sweat rolls down your back, neck, and face, and the back of your throat begins to sting. 

All you can think about is getting home and getting a cool drink of water. You try to trick your mind into thinking about something else – the number of steps to the end of the sidewalk, the flowers on the side of the road, the person you wanted to remember in prayer, the scene in the story you’re writing – so you don’t spend all your mental energy picturing condensation on the outside of a cold glass.

This morning I was having a walk like that and my mind kept straying to my need for shade. I was walking home on a street only recently built in our town. At the moment, it’s surrounded by lots full of broken rubble. No trees, no buildings of any sort, nothing that cast a shadow. Block after block was just concrete sidewalk, hardy flowering weeds, the sun glaring into my eyes. I felt huge relief as I turned at last onto the main street of town and stepped into the shade of an old vine-covered building whose roof awnings cast a comforting dark shadow. 

“The Lord is your shade at your right hand.” Oh, the beauty and blessedness of that cool shadow! This is who God is! He’s deep, cooling, calming relief from the smiting of the sun, from the weariness of the long and exhausting walk. God is our shade.

Of course, the psalmist isn’t content to give us just one metaphor for God, and sometimes the images overlap in their meaning and power. It’s no wonder David sometimes called God his rock – not just because a rock is strong and provides shelter and a place to lean and hide behind when pursued by enemies, but because a large enough rock, in a sandy desert, could cast some shade in a gaspingly hot desert with few trees. Like my vine-covered building here in town, a rock in the desert is a welcome sight. 

The Psalms also give us similes that help us understand our own gasping need for God. “My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” As hot as my walk got this morning, I knew that I was just a few minutes away from the cool oasis of my apartment. A place where the shades were down and I could turn on a fan. A place where I could rest and drink a cool drink of water. But what if I were miles from such comforts? What if such comforts didn’t exist where I was? What if I lived in “a dry and weary land where there is no water”?

 The psalmist tells us that our longing for God, our desperation for him, should be like that. We should be as desperate for him, as aware of our need for him, as someone gasping with heat and thirst in a parched land. But here’s the good news…the psalmist also reminds us that God is our shade. When he travels with us, as he surely does, he’s like a hovering bird who shelters us under his own wings (verse 7 in that same Psalm 63 says “for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy”). 

And here’s the even better news: God is both the one who makes streams in the desert (Isaiah, and so many other places in the Scriptures) and is himself the living water (Jesus!). Living water – not just a well of water, which is wonderful enough when we’re parched -- but flowing, lively, gushing, unexpected water. Water that springs up inside us. 

I think one of the tricks of the enemy is to get us to think, when we’re exhausted and wearied by the changes and chances of our lives, that we live in place where there is no water. We know what it feels like when our flesh is truly fainting.  Our desert hearts pound and our parched wilderness throats sting and our gritty eyes smart with the glare of the world. No rocks in sight. No trees. Maybe not even one vine-covered building. We lose our bearings. We lose our perspective. We lose our hope. We can even lose, if we’re not careful, our grip on the realities of things outside of the immediate facts of our aches and sweat and tears. 

But…

The reality is that he is our shade.

The reality is that he is our living water.

The reality is that, even if there’s no rock or building in sight, he travels with us and can cover us with his wings.

We live in a world that can sometimes feel as barren as a desert. You may be living in circumstances that feel like the worst kind of parched place – a sandy desert or an urban concrete one, or something else entirely. But remember the reality: you live in a land where there is shade and water. God himself is your shade, your water. If there are no other shadows in sight, he will keep you under his wings. Long for him and seek for him. You will find him, and he will give you rest. 

Practicing Patience

I am learning to practice patience.

I used to think I was already a pretty patient person, but in the past year or so, the Lord has been stretching and deepening me in so many ways in this one area that I know now it must be an area that needed lots more work than I thought.

Having a daughter who struggles with OCD and high anxiety levels, I’ve had to learn new levels of calm and patience. There are days I fail miserably, but there are other days, with God’s help, that I am discovering new levels of peace.

It’s hard, sometimes, to know what’s best in a given situation. On the one hand, the sweet girl needs to lean to deal with ordinary stress and brokenness in healthy ways – the things that cause her to bolt into worry-land. On the other hand, there are days when my own heart just can’t take any more of the worrying and anxiety and explosiveness (her struggling reactions in some moments). Keeping my own fretting levels to a minimum – and even finding laughter in a situation – helps to defuse the situation and keep the peace.

This is hard on days when I am just plain tired, and when life seems filled with little things that make me want to – well, be frustrated. But my seemingly normal levels of frustration, my “oh shoot, I dropped that!” or “arrrgh! This isn’t working!” can sometimes be enough to push her into more stress. She has a hard time discerning small, normal, ordinary, every-day stress from the bigger kinds. I am learning saying less often leads to more household peace. And discovering, as I learn the self-control of swallowing those exclamations, just how much of my speech could be taken as whining, complaining, or weariness by those around me.

I am a woman who has many blessings, and who likes to count them (in fact, I’m overdue for a blessings-counting post here) but I confess that occasionally I just need a safe place to whine a little bit, and sometimes that complaining makes its way to the blog. So in the interest of helping me say none of this aloud today, could I just say that both my small, falling-apart, duct-taped together fridge and my so-slow-it-may-as-well-be-working-backwards computer are driving me crazy? Thanks so much for listening.

I return now to my regularly scheduled bout of patience.

Two Movements: Into and Out of the Sanctuary

This week I have my students thinking and writing about the different ways the Anglican church engaged the culture in the 19th century. The Oxford Movement, with its emphasis on the "church gathered" and the importance of gathering in worship to "be the church," sometimes had reservations about the Evangelical movement and its commitment to social action, the way it was "being the church" within the world. (This would be the second generation of the Evangelical revival, folks like Wilberforce and his Clapham friends.)

The distinction drawn, for the sake of the question, is purposefully overdrawn for the sake of compelling thought and discussion. Of course the higher church folk often engaged the culture "in the world" in specific ways, and of course the Evangelicals didn't cease to gather in worship to remember who they were. It's more a matter of emphasis, of looking at where each found its firmest understanding of who they were and where they stood. But it's a good question and a perennial one: what does it mean to be church, and how do we best relate to the world around us with fresh gospel energy?

So during my morning quiet time, when I came across this passage in Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book, I just had to chuckle:
 

 "The task of liturgy is to order the life of the holy community following the text of Holy Scripture. It consists of two movements. First it gets us into the sanctuary, the place of adoration and attention, listening and receiving and believing before God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives ordered to all aspects of the revelation of God in Jesus.

Then it gets us out of the sanctuary into the world into places of obeying and loving, ordering our lives as living sacrifices in the world to the glory of God.  There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives out on the street participating in the work of salvation."

Two movements. Into the sanctuary, out of the sanctuary. Both involving the same kinds of actions: listening, loving, obeying, believing, ordering, giving God glory. Both involving all parts of us. Amen. Yes.